I met my end at the Pass of Skulls. I was eighty years old, my heart was tired, and my armor was a patchwork of a thousand battles. I stood at the narrowest point of the pass with only fifty of my veterans—the "Old Iron."
We faced an entire legion. I didn't feel fear; I felt a profound sense of completion. I had lived a life of service. I had been the wall that held back the dark for half a century. As the first wave of Gamma soldiers hit us, I moved with the fluidity of the rivers I had once used to drown my enemies.
I took seventeen wounds before I went to one knee. I took twenty more before I stopped swinging. As the light faded from my eyes, I didn't see the Gamma banners or the golden armor of the Emperor. I saw the blacksmith's forge in the Southern Marches. I heard my father's hammer.
Strike. Cool. Temper. Repeat.
I died as I lived: unyielding. They say that when I finally fell, the ground of Ohm trembled, and for one brief moment, the celestial light in the sky flickered and went dark. The Shield had broken, but the man behind it was finally home.